


These Violent Delights (have violent ends)

by sparxwrites



Category: Sunless Server - Fandom, The Yogscast
Genre: Abandonment, Abusive Relationships, Anal Sex, Angst, Biting, Blood, Body Horror, Bruises, Disordered Eating, Dissociation, Domestic Violence, Drowning, Eye Trauma, Feral Behavior, Gaslighting, Gen, Gore, Gunplay, Hallucinations, Haunting, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Imprisonment, Knotting, Loneliness, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Neglect, Rough Kissing, Rough Sex, Stockholm Syndrome, Torture, Violence, Werewolves, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-26
Updated: 2016-05-16
Packaged: 2018-05-09 12:24:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 17
Words: 10,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5539853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparxwrites/pseuds/sparxwrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of short drabbles, based on prompts around the theme "violence and awfulness" I got over on my writing blog.</p><p>(Please, please take note of the warnings in the tag. Each chapter will have specific warnings in author's notes.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Feral

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Parvis/Strife, **tw** gore, biting, dismemberment, potentially implied cannibalism

“Parvis?” calls Strife. His voice echoes in the high chambers and stones of the blood magic room, eerie and catcalling in the low light. Crimson shines in the altar, a low blood-red glow echoed by the blocks of redstone atop their glass pillars. The glowstone glows a sickly, uneven yellow. Everything else is dark.

Two points of red gleam from out the shadows, wide and _hungry_. The hair on the back of Strife’s neck stands on end.

“Parvis…?” he says again - quieter, slower. There’s growling now, low and rumbling and rolling, filling the air with the noise of engines and chainsaws and muffled machine gun fire.

The eyes are getting closer. The growl is getting louder.

He reaches for the disassembler at his hip, but his fingers never meet metal. Parvis is on him in a heartbeat, unnatural speed and impossible strength and fingers like claws digging into Strife’s chest as they both tumble to the floor in a tangle of limbs.

Teeth bite down on Strife’s shoulder, jaws clamping down and locking as they puncture skin and sink deep into the blood-right flesh beneath it.

“Parvis!” yells Strife, shoving at him, backhanding him, reaching for his throat. His voice shakes with the pain, body shaking with the shock, and the red eyes flick up to meet his. They’re empty of anything, as hollow as the altar room, and that _growl_  is still rumbling low and unending in his chest like an unholy purr.

Then the teeth bite down again - and again, and again, digging and tearing at the tough muscle and warm, red meat of Strife’s shoulder and arm. Bone meets bone, and Parvis gnaw on it until that, too, snaps beneath sharp teeth and powerful jaws, and the only words Strife can muster are echoing screams.


	2. Gaslighting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ridgedog/Xephos, **tw** domestic violence, abusive relationships, gaslighting

“You… you really need to stop being so clumsy,” says Ridge, eventually. He’s panting, ever so slightly, the high colour of rage draining steadily from his cheeks as he regains his composure. Running a hand through mussed hair to straighten it, he tugs at his coat, settling it more comfortably around his shoulders and smoothing hands over imagined creases in the front of it. “Honestly, Xeph, that’s, what? The third accident this month?”

Xephos, still lying stunned and sprawling in the remains of their coffee table, blinks up at him in horror.  His eyes are wide, blue headlights in the early evening shade of their living room. “No,” he whispers, fingers tightening into fists where they’re braced against the floor, heedless of the shards of glass that bite into his palm. “You _pushed_  me.”

Laughing quietly, high and friendly, that perfect, gap-toothed smile already plastered back on his face, Ridge shakes his head. “No, no. You tripped, remember? You started backing up, and you tripped, and fell straight through the coffee table.” He tuts quietly at the ruin of glass and wood, at the waste of good and expensive furniture. 

“No…” Xephos shakes his head, frowning through the bubbling doubt and confusion settling cold and congealed in his gut. “You… you pushed me? I’m sure you-” He can _remember_  it, hands around his throat, Ridge so angry and roaring and snarling, and then- weightlessness, falling, and the sharp betrayal of impact. He _remembers_. But…

“You must have hit your head quite hard, if you’re misremembering things.” Concern lights warm brown eyes up in shades of honey-gold, and sympathy covers his face like a mask, tugging his brows into a perfectly constructed frown as he notices the sky-blue blood trickling down Xephos’ cheek from a cut on his temple. “And you’re bleeding! Oh, darling… Come on,” he says, stepping forward and offering Xephos a hand, smiling gently. “Let’s get you cleaned up, and that head looked at, hmm?”

Xephos takes it, wide-eyed and shaking and dazed. He can still feel the hands around his neck, phantom fingers and broad palms wrapped around and squeezing, _squeezing_ … But Ridge is _right there_ , all sunny smiles and worry and open hands, and his head _does_  hurt… Maybe. Maybe he’s wrong. Maybe Ridge is right.

( _Who are you kidding? Ridge is always right_ , says the voice in his head, quiet and bitter and poisonous. _Maybe if you remembered that more often, if you were a better husband, you wouldn’t have to keep having all these silly, clumsy accidents._ )

“There we go!” says Ridge, brightly, when Xephos takes the proffered hand. “That’s better.” He helps Xephos to his feet, and then scoops him up into a bridal carry in an easy, dramatic motion, cradling him close. “Let’s head to the bathroom, shall we?”

He meets Xephos eyes and smiles - warmly, widely, tenderly. And there, somewhere behind the masks and the arguments and the accidents, is the man Xephos fell in love with.

But, even as Ridge carries to him the bathroom, whispering sweet nothings and reassurances in his ear, Xephos can’t help but think that that man seems a long, long way away nowadays.


	3. Haunted

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Strife/Lying, **tw** hallucinations, haunting, mental instability, implied / referenced non-con

In the morning, he washes his face in his bathroom, and there’s a person in the mirror that’s not him. He can never get a good look at them - they move when he focuses his gaze on them, just a flash of blonde and blood and blue in the corner of his eye - but they’re always there. Every morning. Waiting for him, and smiling. There while he washes his face, brushes his teeth, shaves, just… waiting, watching, smiling.

He gets used to it.

-

There’s laughter behind every door in the tower. He catches sight of flickers of blonde hair tipped in blood, sometimes, a flash of fox tails just disappearing around every corner, quiet giggling echoing in the air when he goes to check and finds only empty corridors. The voice sings, too, when it’s late, and he’s hunched over his desk and working by the light of a single torch with a foggy mind and hands that shake with want of sleep - strange, lilting lullabies in a language he can almost but not _quite_  understand. It drives him to distraction, movement in the corner of his eye, whispers just on the edge of hearing, small things that creep in through his ear and worm their way into his brain until it feels like his mind’s buzzing with them.

He gets used to that, too.

-

The shadows touch him in the dark, roaming hands that pluck at his sheets, and his clothes, at the soft and vulnerable bits of him he usually hides beneath his suit. He bars the doors, puts torches on every inch of floor and wall, lies curled and _waiting_  beneath three layers of blankets - and still they come. They’re tipped with nails like claws, and as they rake down his chest, scratch at the leaves closed over his sheath like they’re demanding entry, he knows they’re real enough to leave marks he’ll see in the morning.

He gets used to even them, in the end.


	4. Gouge

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Parvis/Strife, **tw** gore, eye trauma, mental instability

“Nothing personal,” says Parvis, with a manic sort of cheerfulness. He’s skin and bones, a feral wolf in human clothing, but somehow his six feet worth of nothingness is enough to pin Strife’s solid muscle and weight to the floor. There’s power behind it, power crawling across Strife’s skin, cold and congealing, and he curses ever helping Parvis in his path through blood magic as he thrashes against its slimy hold.

Something presses against the corner of his eye, then, and he goes very, very still.

“I just need an eye,” Parvis continues, hand shaking almost as much as his voice, jittery and jumped up on blood and power and madness. “And yours happens to be the closest to hand- other than mine, I mean- but I need both of mine, to read the ritual! Silly Strifey. Can’t use my own eye.”

He pauses, panting, staring down at where the point of the dagger rests at the meeting of Strife’s eyelids. “Got to- gotta have _yours_.” His voice is low, ragged, shaking.

“Parvis…” croaks out Strife, a man begging for his life. “Parvis, put the… put the knife down. We can. We’ll go out and find a spider, use a spider eye, just…. just put the knife-”

Shaking his head emphatically, Parvis presses harder with the knife, until a tear of blood rolls down Strife’s cheek. Until Strife stops talking. “No, no,” he says, grinning. “Can’t be from- from an animal. Has to be from a person - a _player_.” He pauses, staring dreamily down into Strife’s wide, terrified eyes. “And yours are so _beautiful,_ Strifey, they really are - so green, so bright, so _pretty._  I’m sure the altar would love them. It would be so- so _happy_ , Strifey.”

“No, _no,_ Parvis,” moans Strife, staring up at the creature straddling him, unable to even look away for fear of the movement driving a point into his eye. “Just-”

“No more talking!” yells Parvis, abruptly, his voice the roar of hundreds talking with him, echoing around the empty stone walls. _Inhuman._ “No more talking, Strifey, just- just give me what I want, and I won’t have to hurt you.” He grins, the manic energy leaking back into his limbs. “Now just- just stay-”

The knife pushes down, and Strife _screams,_ screams and screams until his throat is raw as the blood rushes down his cheek and the knife _digs_ , pushing and scraping and making space where there is none between eyeball and socket. Congealed magic holds him still, pins him in place as Parvis seeks out muscles - one, two, _three_  - with tongue-between-teeth concentration and slices through them carefully, neatly, before severing the optic nerve with the smallest flick of his wrist.

When he’s done, he takes Strife’s chin oh-so-gently in his fingers and tilts his face to the side, until the eyeball drops cleanly out of a socket gouged bloody with knife marks and into his waiting hand.

“-stay _still_ ,” he finishes, eyeball in one palm and the other wrapped around the hilt of the dagger. “There. All done.” He stares down at the empty socket of Strife’s eye, transfixed, deaf to the screaming, to the blood trickling slowly but inexorably towards the blood altar’s greedy mouth. “And I didn’t even have to hurt you.”


	5. Eviscerate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Strife/Lying, **tw** gore, violence

“Go. To. _Hell_ ,” snarls Strife, and lunges. He’s sick of Lying - sick of their laughing mouth, and knowing eyes, and the way their body changes when he blinks, morphs, unnatural and inhuman and terrifying. They’re laughing even as he slashes at them, not even bothering to try and dodge, just grinning that sharp, pointed grin and _laughing…_

The disassembler bites, _tears_ , ripping easily through fabric and skin and muscle. It leaves a gaping gash across their stomach, edge to edge and midway between rib and hip, dark and gruesome despite the clean cut.

Lying exhales slowly, evenly, one hand pressed to the wound in their front. “You _stabbed_  me,” they say, offended, lips pursed in disgust. Blood trickles over their hand in thin rivulets, and they frown, dropping their other hand to pinch the wound closed in a hopeless attempt to stem the flow. “How… rude.”

“Yeah,” snaps Strife, hands curled white-knuckled around the hilt of the atomic disassembler as Lying’s blood burns slowly off the sizzling blue of its electric blade, faint smoke in the air and the smell of burning human. “Yeah, I did. Now hurry up goddamn well die already.”

Humming softly to themself, Lying looks down at the blood already spreading through their clothes, a dark stain against the white and blue despite their hands pinching the wound closed. They let go, watch the blood bloom faster with a sharp-toothed smile, and reach one hand into the wound.

Strife’s hands go slack around the disassembler, its head dipping to sizzle and hiss against the grass as the colour drains from his face.

Their insides are damp and slimy, but delightfully _warm_  compared to the constant cold of their skin. Sighing contentment, they feel around until their fingers meet the slick loops and folds of their own intestines, long tubes coiled tight within their abdominal cavity. It’s only too easy to wrap a hand around one section of them and tug them out through the hole in their stomach, long, pink tubes sliding out easily with a soft, wet noise.

The loops slide easily through their fingers, and they wind the length of it around their arm to keep it held up and off the grass. Gory as the scene already is, they have no desire to introduce dirt to their insides. They hold the intestines close to them, a bundle of warm flesh in the crook of their arm as they pull and pull and _pull_.

Somewhere on the edge of their hearing, a poppet breaks with the sound of a bell’s chime.

The noise Strife makes is somewhere between gagging and whimpering - though he can’t seem to tear his wide eyes away from Lying’s casual handling of his own organs. “How- oh good _lord_ , what-”

“Oh, _darling_  Strife…” says Lying, slowly, as if they’re talking to a small child. They reach one hand up, slick with blood from the loops of their intestines, and cup Strife’s ashen cheek - it leaves a handprint behind, in a shade of crimson to match Strife’s shirt. “Don’t you know?”

They laugh, high and thin enough it’s almost a giggle, mouth widening impossibly until their sharp-toothed smile slides off the edges of their face, dark and cavernous. “I _can’t die._ ”


	6. Gunshot

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hatsome and implied Hatsounds, **tw** gunplay, brief violence, blood

“So,” said Nano, all bright smiles and darkly glittering eyes. She shifted her arm where it was hooked around Smith’s neck, choke-tight, and pressed the gun a little harder against his temple. “Are you going to put your weapons down and listen to me, now? Or do you need a little more _convincing_.”

Trott’s gaze flicked from Nano’s gleeful expression to Smith, on his knees and wheezing and bleeding from his shoulder in a slowly-spreading rose. “See…” he said slowly, feeling Ross shift behind him in the air that ghosted across the back of his neck and the warmth of another body close behind his shoulder. “I’m thinking that maybe putting down our weapons when you’ve got a gun, and you’ve already shot _one_ of us, would be a pretty stupid thing to do, sweetheart.”

“Fuck’s sake, Scrottimus, do as she fuckin’ says!” snapped Smith, eyes flicking up and sideways towards Nano’s smile, face grey. “I’m bloody well bleeding to death here!”

“Don’t be such a whiny baby, Smiffy, it’s barely even a scratch,” said Trott dismissively. “We’ve done far worse to you, and you never bitched this much about it.”  
“We’ll kiss it better for you later, if you want,” added Ross, with a smirk, breaking into a full-on grin at Smith’s strangled howl of frustration.  
“Oi, if your kisses make things better, then how come his dick’s still all-”

Sighing impatiently at the (admittedly, entirely predictable) derailing of the negotiation, Nano tossed her head, flicking her hair out of her face. “Okay, boys,” she said, somewhere between bored and impatient as she loosened her grip around Smith’s neck a little. “Here’s how it’s going to go.”

She jammed two fingers into the bullet wound through Smith’s shoulder, and he arched against her, yelling in a voice that cracked and stuttered. Trott and Ross cried out, too, all their swaggering bravado replaced by very genuine fear as they struggled to stay still and not give Nano an excuse to do any more shooting.

Grinning, she took advantage of Smith’s open mouth to push the barrel of her pistol inside, chipping tooth against metal and cutting his lip against the protrusion of the sight. He froze, instantly, sound strangling in his throat, and she couldn’t help but giggle at the expression on his face - somewhere between terror and arousal as he trembled against her, breath puffing out his nose in jagged, uneven exhales.

“We can do this the unpleasant way, which involves a _lot_  more screaming from you,” she said, looking down at Smith with an oddly affectionate expression as she pulled her fingers free from the hole in his flesh. “Or… we do this the _fun_  way.” Her grip on the gun gentled, no longer forcing it into his mouth but letting it rest lightly on his tongue.

Her free arm curled around his neck again, softer this time, bloodied fingers petting at the side of his face. When she felt his tongue flatten tentatively against the barrel of the gun, the taste of oil and metal and blood flooding his mouth, she couldn’t help but bite her lip. “You come quietly, and I’m sure Lalna can patch Alsmiffy up, and we can have a more, uh… _enjoyable_  negotiation process all round.

She eased the gun just a little further into Smith’s mouth, and her stomach clenched at the way his eyes fluttered, falling half-lidded as his lips stretched easily around the barrel of the gun.

“You’ve got a funny way of asking, missy,” muttered Trott - though he couldn’t take his eyes off Smith, on his knees, or off the gun pushed into his slack-jawed, welcoming mouth. “Very funny indeed.”

Ross exhaled slowly, an uneven sound that wasn’t entirely fear. “I dunno, Trott,” he said, slowly. “Sounds- sounds pretty reasonable to me. What about you, Smith? What d’you think?”

The noise that came out of Smith’s mouth - rather occupied with slowly-warming, spit-slick metal as it was - was barely even human, just a low groan. It tapered off as Nano slipped the gun in further still, nudging it until she could feel the softness of his throat against the muzzle. His eyes were almost entirely closed, now, just a thin strip of blown pupil and iris partially obscured by eyelashes.

“ _Christ_ ,” muttered Trott, eyes wide, and Ross made a soft noise of agreement low in his throat.

Smiling brightly, Nano cupped Smith’s jaw with her free hand, fingers brushing across his cheek to feel the hard lines of the gun beneath the thin flesh there. “Well,” she said, voice only the slightest bit flustered. “I’m _so_ glad we could all come to an agreement.”


	7. Drowning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kirin/Lying, **tw** drowning, mild torture

It’s surprisingly quiet beneath the water at the bottom of their well. It pours into their open mouth, their nose, their ears, and dulls all their senses until the only thing they can focus on is the way their skin _crawls_  with the raw horror of it.

They force their eyes open against the water, despite the way it burns, and twitch as their own face stares back at them from the depths - tattered clothes and rotting hair and bloodied, crimson eyes. It smiles at them, a grotesque mockery of a human expression as it bares needle-sharp teeth in the hollow blackness of its mouth.

Somewhere behind their let ear, a poppet breaks with the high, thin noise of a bell, and they remember with coiling fear in their gut the way their machine had shattered and burned beneath Kirin’s lightning.Kirin hauls them up again, and they breach the surface with a gasp of air and a roar of noise as the world reasserts itself. He’s yelling _traitor_  at them, yelling _kidnapper_ \- _betrayed_  and _liar_ and _manipulated -_ and he shakes them hard enough that their teeth rattle and their thoughts scatter as they hack up the water that had settled in their chest.

“I trusted you! I trusted you, and- and all along, you took her, you _kidnapped_  her, and you were using me, going to- I know what you did to me! What you were going to- how could you? How _dare_  you?! I _trusted_  you, you-!”

Everything muffles again as they’re plunged under the water again, one broad hand trapping both wrists behind their back and the other with their ponytail wrapped around it, grasping at the back of their neck. Kirin forces their head down with a bruising grip, _down_ into cold and wet and screaming lungs as they exhale with the shock of it.

Kyofushin is there even before they open their eyes, this time, a face with wide, dead eyes and a dancing smile imprinted onto the inside of their eyelids. They force their eyes open, bubbles and greenish-black murk filling their vision - and through it all, the face is _there_ , rising from the depths, with hands outstretched and a slowly gaping mouth.

 _Finished playing the game?_  it asks, in its distorted scream-crackle of a voice, as Lying’s eyes wide against the burn of the water. _Good. We’ve been waiting for you…_

Lying does scream then, screams with the last of the breath in their lungs and watches the bubbles rise glittering to the surface as a poppet breaks with a chime, and then another one, and another one. The hands reach closer, broken crimson nails and greying skin and streaked blood that flakes off into the water.

The air in their lungs runs out, and they can no longer scream - but they can thrash, twisting frantically in Kirin’s grip like a beached fish, kicking and bucking with all of their strength. They’re strong, gymnast-wiry and cunning, but Kirin is stronger, solid muscle and weight and _rage_  as he pins them down despite their struggles and forces them deeper until his hand is in the water and the’re up to their chest in the bottom of the well.

 _There we go_ , croons Kyofushin, those ruined hands reaching up to caress Lying’s face, cupping their cheeks. _There we go. Come to us._

Lying thrashes harder, but their chest burns, their limbs ache, and their neck is bruising and grinding beneath Kirin’s iron grip. Kyofushin wraps arms around them in a mockery of a lover’s caress, winding corpse-like limbs around their back as its smile widens to show pointed teeth in rotting gums.

 _That’s right_ , it says, as Lying’s vision blurs and blackens at the edges, as the water rushes down to fill their lungs with weight like stones, as Kirin’s dulled yelling is silenced behind the breathless ringing in their ears. The arms around them tighten, and they’re too weak to fight as they’re torn from Kirin’s grip and dragged down, down, limp and senseless, towards the bottom of the well.  _It’s our turn, now_.


	8. Lonely

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nilesy, **tw** isolation / abandonment

Nilesy didn’t like to think of it being _alone_ , exactly. He wasn’t alone. He had his cats, after all, and other animals to feed and clean out and look after. Strife was just over… somewhere, locked up in that terrifying tower of his that Nilesy was never, ever going to visit on his own, Kirin popped round to leave gifts and eat the cookies Nilesy baked once every couple of months, and there _had_  to be other people in the world _somewhere_. 

So no. He wouldn’t call it being alone. Even if Lomadia _had_ run off - temporarily, he told himself, only temporarily, she would be back eventually - to places unknown with Nano and Honeydew to fight monsters, or hunt monsters, or something to that effect. The note she’d left hadn’t exactly been clear about what it was, exactly, she was going off to do.

The note hadn’t been clear on a lot of things, now he thought about it. Including when, exactly, she was coming back.

It wasn’t much different to back on the old world, he told himself. Where it had just been him, and his shack, and the jungle - and his trusty emergency pool. He’d been _properly_  alone then, not even a cat that time, and having an actual house with working machinery and a kitchen and a ceiling that didn’t leak was a _vast_  improvement, he had to say.

(He _hadn’t_  been alone then, though. There’d been customers. Rythian and Zoey who’d taken him, albeit a little begrudgingly, into their home. Sips and Sjin, who had sort of tortured him, sure, but what was a little torture between friends? And he _had_  had friends, back then.)

But here, in this world, in the empty house, with only him to cook and clean and tend to the gardens, only his voice bouncing echoing and hollow through the lifeless rooms… well. He couldn’t deny that he was _lonely_.


	9. Savagery

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Strife and Kirin, **tw** implied violence, implied body horror

If there’s one thing Kirin can respect about Strife, it’s how tightly he’s leashed the beast that lurks beneath his skin.

It’s not quite as literal as Kirin’s own beast, perhaps - doesn’t buck and roar within him, pressing fine, spiderwebbing cracks into the shell of his mortal frame and scorching him from the inside out - but it’s there nonetheless. A hulking, shaking thing tied tightly down by formality and etiquette and a level of self-control so unforgiving it may as well be iron. 

The white-knuckle clench of Strife’s fingers around the staff of his atomic disassembler, the set of his jaw, the coldness in his eyes… It doesn’t take the animals around them, hiding in the low underbrush and tall trees of the Twilight Forest, going silent as they pass to tell Kirin he’s keeping pace with a fellow predator.

He shouldn’t be surprised by it, he really shouldn’t - no one without skin of steel and a bite to match their bark would have survived Parvis’ tender mercies for as long as Strife has - but somehow still, after all this time, he still can’t help but marvel over it. It’s almost beautiful, in its way, how Strife makes it seem like holding the raw, animal violence that howls in his bones at bay is easy work. 

“…Don’t you want to know more about what you’re going to be fighting?” asks Kirin, curiously, as they make their way through the forest, Strife picking at his power armour and fiddling with the disassembler, fine-tuning and priming as they go. “I’ve hardly told you anything about what you’ll be facing. I should give you-”

Strife snorts, and Kirin hears the snarl in it, the growl of a dog having caught the scent and the wounded pride of a hunter whose ability to take down prey has been questioned.

“How hard can it be?” he grunts, tightening a strap on his gloves and flexing his fingers before lifting his head, cold eyes meeting Kirin’s. “If it’s living and breathing, I can kill it. If it’s not…” He doesn’t quite smile, but teeth show through the bitten pink of his lips, quietly bared. “Well, then. I’ll still make a damn good go of it.”

When Strife holds his head high and throat bared, spine a ruler-straight line from neck to hip, it’s a challenge, one predator to another. _Come and get me_  shouted at the top of his lungs, a whispered _if you dare_  in the faint quirk of his lip.

The set of Strife’s shoulders promises swift, savage violence should Kirin ever try and take him up on that challenge.

“Oh, I’m sure you’ll be able to kill it. That’s why I hired you,” says Kirin, lightly. They’ve stopped, he realises faintly, squared face-to-face on either side of the path, gazes locked in some silent fight. “You are, after all, the most well-armed person in this world… aren’t you?”

This time, Strife _does_  snarl, that snapping anger pressing too-tight against his skin, fingers clenched tight enough the skin over them threatens to tear with the pressure. Kirin tries hard not to grin, not to flinch, to keep perfectly still - to show neither victory nor fear in the face of the sudden, electric crackle of the disassembler. It’s not an easy task.

“If you have an issue with me, Kirin, then speak now or hold your peace,” Strife warns, low and heated, chest rising and falling with the effort of keeping control. “I don’t like people playing games with me.”

“I’m sure you don’t,” agrees Kirin, almost cheerfully, as he slips bruise-blackened fingers into the pockets of his robes and feels the neon-lightning scars beneath his bandages ache and crack. “It’s a good thing I’m not, then, isn’t it?”

His own beast screams beneath his skin, lightning and darkness and void, too many eyes blinking as a mouth full of uncountable teeth stretches wide and hungry. Strife’s throat is still bared and part of him, _such_  a large part of him, wants lunge. Just to test, to see, to _try…_

Instead, though, he smiles, pleasantly, and tears his eyes away from Strife’s, from the challenge and the violence and the kindred spirit in them. “Well then, shall we?” he asks, turning back to the path. “Not far to go now, and then… then we’ll see whether you can kill the Lich.”


	10. Empty Shell

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kirin, Parvis, and Strife, **tw** mental breakdown, unhealthy relationship, fae manipulation, implied torture

“I do believe,” says Kirin, coolly, not bothering to look up from his paperwork as the door to the shop opens with the quiet tinkle of a bell, “that this belongs to you?”

Will pushes the door shut behind him before answering, stamping the icy slush off his boots on the doormat and shrugging out of his coat to hang it up next to Kirin’s on the coat stand. “Oh?” he says, absently, focused on unwrapping the bright red scarf from around his neck - a solstice gift from Parvis, soft and delightfully warm - and breathing some warmth into his cold fingers. “Did I leave a charging cable here again? Sorry, they just seem to-”

“No,” says Kirin, patiently, but there’s a note of steel in his voice that makes Will pause with his hands on the tails of his scarf. “Not a charger.” He shakes the body he’s holding up by his grip around its arm, limp and on its knees, and it sways with the force of it. “ _This_.”

Looking up, slowly, Will has to bite down a choked noise of horror at the sight of Parvis, blank-eyed and trembling, knelt at Kirin’s feet and half-slumped against him. One of Kirin’s hands is wrapped around Parvis’ upper arm, fingers closing easily around it, and it’s as if his hold is the only thing keeping Parvis remotely upright. Parvis’ head lolls, chin against his chest, other hand in his lap with fingers twitching.

“P- Parvis?!”

There’s no response to the name, and Will dashes forward, Kirin forgotten, to drop to his knees in front of Parvis. “Hey, Parv, can you- Parv?” He reaches out tentatively, cradling Parvis’ chin in his hands and lifting until he can meet Parvis’ eyes. They’re just as blank as they were when Will was halfway across the room, hollow pits with no light or life left in them, and Will feels the fury rising in his veins even as he looks up at Kirin. “What the _hell_  did you do to him?!”

“Taught him a lesson.” Kirin shrugs, letting go of Parvis and not even blinking when the human slumps against Will, still trembling like he’s hypothermic. “He was making a nuisance of himself and involving himself in things he had no right to be involved in. I… showed him the error of his ways.” His gaze is still on the paperwork, but his lips quirk upwards a little, a faint flash of teeth.

“ …What did you _do_  to him?” repeats Will, but it’s softer, this time, less of a demand and more of a quiet expression of horror as he clutches Parvis close and rubs a gentle hand over his back, trying to stop the shivering. Parvis doesn’t respond, doesn’t nuzzle closer or try to pull away, and Will has to grit his teeth against the _wrongness_  of it that drags at his gut.

Sighing impatiently, Kirin sets his pen down and finally looks at Will. “He’ll recover,” he says, flippantly, leaving out the _probably_  that should really be tacked onto the end of the sentence. “And will be a less unpleasant person because of the experience, with any luck. Now, find somewhere to leave him for the morning - you have a job to do, you can fuss over him later.”

“No.”

Will regrets the word the minute it’s out of his mouth, Kirin’s displeasure gathering like a storm above him, but he can’t bring himself to take it back. Swallowing hard, he lifts the scarf off his neck and sets it over Parvis’, wrapping it around until his pale throat’s covered by the warm fabric. “No,” he repeats, “I’m- I’m going to take Parvis, and we’re going home, and we’ll be staying there until he’s-” He stumbles over his phrasing or a moment, words catching in his throat. “…better.”

“And if he doesn’t get better?” asks Kirin, voice dangerously low and eyes flashing with controlled anger.

Stumbling to his feet, Will hauls Parvis to his feet and loops one of Parvis’ arms around his neck - he can stand, apparently, but is a puppet with his strings cut, slumping and aimless. “You should have thought about that _before_ you did this to my _friend,_ ” Will says, words a furious hiss and voice dripping with venom as he carefully wraps an arm around Parvis’ back. 

Parvis’ chin drops back against his chest, head lolling sideways until it’s half-resting against Will’s shoulder. His eyes are dead, empty, lifeless. He doesn’t move until Will tugs him, and he’s forced to walk or fall, feet moving in a clumsy shuffle as Will practically drags him towards the door. 

“ _Will_ -” says Kirin, warning in his voice. 

Will doesn’t bother to stop and look back at him. Instead, he snatches his coat off the hook with his free arm and hauls both of them out the door and into the snow without another word. The door shuts lightly behind them with a faint chime, and Kirin is left staring at wood and glass, seething silently at the sheer _impudence_  of mortals.


	11. Bruises

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rayse, **tw** mild injury, angst

Feathers, Rayse thought sometimes, were too good at hiding bruises. Between the fine, soft down close to their skin, and the large, sleek pinions that covered everything else, there was no way to see the mottled purple rising and the yellow-green fading across their arms and ribs.

There was nothing sinister about the marks, just a side-effect of being a mercenary with a punishing training schedule in a land filled with monsters of all kinds. Both they and the rest of the band trained with wooden swords, dulled edges that wouldn’t cut, but it hardly softened the blow if someone misjudged their strength.

Sighing quietly, Rayse pressed a hand against their forearm, feeling the dull ache of the bruising beneath the feathers at the pressure. Everyone else ended up with bruises, too - other than maybe Czol, their strange blue-black scales seem to protect them, given even the most enthusiastic of Foli’s blows hardly made them flinch - and they would all sit around the fire tonight, or perhaps during bathing, complaining and comparing wounds.

It was such a small thing, such a silly thing, but they couldn’t help but feel almost left out. Marks hidden beneath their plumage, discolourations covered by speckled brown and gold, they sometimes wondered if anyone even _noticed_  they’d been hit, much less thought to ask if they were okay.

Still, despite their bruises, they couldn’t help but feel a sense of satisfaction. Their skill with a sword were improving slowly but steadily, despite not really having limbs designed to lift and wield heavy pieces of wood and metal almost as big as they were.

“Rayse!” From outside their tent, the familiar tones of Foli’s slightly strained voice, a little rough from lack of sleep, filtered through the fabric. “Come on, baby bird, it’s hot springs time!”

Smiling to themself, Rayse let go of their forearm, the faint frown slipping from their brow. “Coming!” they called back. “Just finding a towel.”

“Good!” yelled Foli back, a little more distant than before. “Because-” He cut of with a wail, and a splash, shortly followed by a howl of rage. “ _Czol_ , you little- backup! Baby bird, I need back up! I’m under-”

As his words cut off again, this time with a sharp bark of laughter from Czol and the unmistakeable gurgle of Foli still trying to yell beneath the water, Rayse struggled to hold back their giggles. 

Snatching the towel from where it had been left draped over a chair last time - not that it did much good, waterlogged as their feathers got after a good soak - they sprinted out the tent and towards the springs, where Czol appeared to be sitting on Foli’s head as best they could.

“Incoming!” yelled Rayse, launching themself at Czol with a jump and a flap to gain height and speed, cannonballing past them into the pool with a loud splash. As they sank below the water, the sound of Czol’s barking laughter and Foli’s heaving breaths as he was finally released muffling as it filled their ears, they couldn’t help but smile, bruises forgotten.


	12. Trust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rythian/Lying, **tw** mild body horror, implied sex

“All this,” murmurs Rythian, one hand carding through Lying’s hair where it tickles his throat, the witch curled naked against him in a sprawl of cold limbs and golden hair and quiet, contented humming. “All this, and you still don’t trust me, do you?”

He can feel it in the way Lying’s shoulders tense every time his hand brushes too close to their throat, the way their magic thrums against the inside of their skin, ready to be called at a moment’s notice. Chuckling quietly, humourlessly, he curls a lock of their hair around one finger and tugs. “Should I be offended?”

“Trust you?” asks Lying, derisively - though they lean into the touch all the same, eyes half-lidded with the warmth and the afterglow. “ _Please._  Of course I don’t trust you. One doesn’t trust monsters… at least, not if one wants to live.”

Rythian swallows down the sour taste in his mouth at the words, resisting the urge to push Lying out of his lap and dump them off the bed onto the cold stone floor. They’re right, after all, even if he doesn’t want to hear it - his Ender heritage is carved into his bones, purple eyes and pointed teeth and too many whitish scars to count. There’s no escaping from it, no hiding it. To deny it would only mean lying to himself.

“If I’m a monster, you are too,” he points out, softly, one hand rising to trace Lying’s lower lip, the soft skin hiding hungry sharks-teeth behind a wicked smile. It’s crossing a line, perhaps - Lying has many lines, hidden in their darkness, things they won’t countenance or talk about - but the words fall out of his mouth before he can stop them.

They sound, even to his ears, a little like an accusation. 

Laughing, Lying presses a kiss to the tip of Rythian’s finger, soft and tender. “Oh, my dear Rythian,” they say, gently, a widening smile and flash of sharp white as they speak. They tuck themself against his bare skin a little more firmly, until they can feel the almost-human warmth of him and the slow beat of his heart against their back. “Of course I am. It takes one to know one, after all.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Parvis/Strife, **tw** manipulation, abusive relationship, unhealthy thoughts

“I love you, Strife,” says Parvis, abruptly, one golden evening when Strife’s planting sunflowers as the horizon flares pink and purple with the setting sun. “I love you, so much. You love me too, right?”

Strife flushes at the unexpectedness of it, at the compliment, at the way Parvis seems to glow in the low light, eyes lit up liquid brown and hair on fire. “I-” he stutters, up to his elbows in dirt, trowel discarded, suit trousers filthy from kneeling in the mud. There’s a right answer to this, and a wrong answer to this, and neither of them are the answer he wants to give… but he knows what’s expected of him, and Parvis is already pouting, lower lip pushed out full and shiny in a caricature of distress. 

He swallows down the way _love_  makes his stomach curl with a mixture of panic-fear-horror, and wonders as always why Parvis’ love doesn’t make him feel like everyone always says love should. “Of- of course I do, I-”

“Then you wouldn’t say no to me so much,” interrupts Parvis. He’s not even looking at Strife, instead staring up at the sky, at the moon and stars just beginning to emerge - and Strife has no doubt he’s got his greedy gaze fixed on them, too, not just Minecraftia. One planet is pitiful territory for a young godling in the making, after all. “You wouldn’t say no if you loved me.”

Exhaling slowly, Strife looks down at the ground, at the newly turned earth and the baby sunflowers all around him, carefully staked to support them as they grow. “If this is about the blood magic-” he starts, carefully.

Yet again, Parvis interrupts him, jittery and enthusiastic, too much energy to be kept in such a skinny, mortal form. “It’s about everything!” he says, throwing his hands up into the air. “ _No, Parvis, I can’t help you today. I’m too busy_.” His imitation of Strife’s voice is unflattering, high pitched and nasal and utterly inaccurate.

Strife’s hands curl into fists nonetheless, spiderwebbing brown lines across his knuckles where the dirt’s worked its way into the cracks in his skin. “Parvis-”

“ _No, Parvis, the trip to the Twilight forest with Kirin wore me out too much._  How come Kirin gets your help and not me, hmm? _No, Parvis, I’m not in the mood-”_

“Look, Parvis.” Strife feels the flush creeping up his neck, the curdling self-consciousness making him feel sick. “Don’t-”

_“No, Parvis, I know you’re tired and hurting from giving all that blood, but I won’t help you because of my_ stupid _morals_ -”

“I’m _sorry_!” The words burst out of him like a wounded animal clawing at the inside of his chest, raw and helpless. “I’m- I’m sorry. It’s just…” He clenches his jaw until his molars ache, until his chest hurts from holding his breath and the neat scars that line the insides of his upper arms in perfect rows throb in time to his heartbeat. “Things have been… difficult, recently. I _have_  been busy.”

Parvis’ expression gentles, all the mocking anger draining away until all that’s left is an open, boyish face - always so _young_  when he’s not lit by the red light of the altar, Strife forgets just _how_  young sometimes - and wide eyes. “I just want to spend time with you, Strifey,” he says, and no matter how honest the words sound, there’s still just the slightest hint of wheedling to his tone. “Is that so much to ask? Spending time with my boyfriend?”

“…No,” says Strife, eyes still downcast, pressing fingertips into the dirt because the damp touch of the earth is easier to process than the faint taste of panic at the back of his throat, the way his heart is clenching in his chest. “You’re right. I’ll try to do better, I- I promise.”

The way Parvis’ face lights up at that, despite the steady darkening of the sky as the sun sinks ever further under the horizon, makes Strife’s stomach clench with something between guilt and longing. In the velvety blue of early night, his eyes gleam almost black as he looks down at Strife, on his knees amidst the dirt and the flowers. He looks so much _more_ than human, like this, moonlight skin and dark eyes and an aura of power so much larger than his lanky frame - a god already, bare feet, faded t-shirt, ragged jeans and all.

“And I’ll-” Strife takes a deep breath, one hand coming up to touch the inside of his upper arm, to touch the old marks kept hidden beneath expensive, neatly-pressed shirts. “I’ll try and help with the blood magic. Just sometimes, mind, when you need… a little extra.”

College screams in his mind like an alarm bell, a whirlwind of memories full of warnings. He ignores them.

Parvis gasps, and his grin widens. “Oh, Strifey! You’re the best.” He darts forward - trampling freshly-turned earth to solid mud as he goes - to grab Strife’s face in his hands and lean down to kiss him, hard. Parvis always kisses like it’s a battle, like time’s running out, like Strife will disappear if he doesn’t devour him fast enough.

As always, Strife lets him, hands curled gentle around the scar-rough skin of Parvis’ forearms. His lips bruise under Parvis’ enthusiastic attention, slipping open on demand, head tilted back until his neck cricks so Parvis doesn’t have to get down on his knees in the dirt as well. 

_This is love_ , he reminds himself, when Parvis bites down on his lip hard enough to make it bleed and he nearly gags at the salty-copper taste of his own blood on his tongue. _This is what everyone wants, what you’re_ supposed _to want. You’re lucky to have this_. He repeats it as if it will change the faint nausea in the pit of his stomach, the throb of his lip, the way Parvis’ mouth on his tastes like damp rot and leaves him cold all the way down to his toes.

Around him, the sunflowers start to feel like a cage.


	14. Dissociation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lalna, **tw** past trauma, dissociation, mild injury

The first thing Lalna always noticed was the _distance_  of it. The world seemed to widen around him, stretching out infinitely huge and silent and empty in every direction. Even the whirr and hum of the machines seemed deadened somehow, as if an invisible blanket of snow had fallen in the five minutes he’d been distracted.

“Oh, come on,” he mumbled himself, prying the front of the macerator he was working on away from its frame, despite the way the walls of glass were pressing in and his lips felt numb, hands too big and clumsy. “Not now, not _now_ -”

His hand slipped, brain no longer properly hooked up to his fingers, wires crossed and frayed, and he hissed as a jagged edge of metal opened a gash across his palm. “Fuck,” he swore, though there was no heat behind it, hardly any pain either, just… deadness, a head perched atop a strange sack of flesh and organs that he could only vaguely remember belonging to him.

_(”I can’t stay connected long enough to fix this.”)_

Dizziness rang in his ears, a high, thin note on the edge of his hearing, and the blood dripped from his palm in a steady rhythm of drops against the floor. He collapsed backwards into his chair, trying to remember what it felt like to have hands, trying to remember how he usually breathed without having to consciously remember each inhale and exhale, but it was no good. The world was filled with static now, cotton wool around him, his body heavy and useless.

_(“Lalna, I need your help. Antimatter, explosives as fast as you please. This will eat the world!”)_

“Fuck!” he repeated, with a little more conviction, though the word brought him no relief from the crushing weight of his own thoughts. His tongue felt heavy, his whole _body_  felt heavy, and trying to fight through the detached lethargy felt like swimming through treacle. His chest began to burn, and it took a long moment for him to process that he’d forgotten to keep breathing.

_(The thing in front of him wasn’t an explosion, it was the_ void _, a hollow emptiness so loud it rang in his ears, darkness and nothingness and the howls of a dying planet.)_

He slid off the chair and onto the flood, cold and solid, blessed stone beneath his hands. It was too large in the workroom, too hollow, too much nothingness. The space beneath his desk was much better, a low wooden ceiling with machines on either side - their low hum still dampened by the disconnect between him and the rest of the world, but comforting nonetheless.

_( _He clung to the rock face, feet struggling to keep purchase on the tiny ledge he was stood on, staring into that endless maw - and wondered if this, perhaps, was what final death looked like_. _)__

Tucked up amongst his machines and curled into a near-ball, hands laced over his scalp and head between his knees, Lalna began to count his breaths, slow and determined. _In_  two three, _out_  two three, _in_  two three, _out_ two three… It took effort, conscious effort, against the slowness of time and the numbness of his body and the weight of the air around him pressing down. 

There was nothing he could do, though, other than sit and breathe and wait for it to pass. He knew that from long, agonisingly long experience. Nothing to do but wait, and pray that the slow softness didn’t tighten and coil into a steadily-rising panic, until he couldn’t breathe for an entirely different reason.


	15. Werewolves

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Parvis/Strife, **tw** werewolves, violence, explicit sex, knotting

_Know your place_ , snarls Strife, through a mouthful of fur and blood, all bared teeth and muzzle wrinkled in fury. _Mutt. Packless. Omega._ He places one paw on Parvis’ muzzle and bears down, another between the high hunch of his shoulders, pinning him even more firmly. _You were_ nothing _without me, and you’ll be nothing again if you aren’t careful. Know your place._  

Beneath him, Parvis squirms, whimpering in high, thin whines at the too-sharp grip Strife’s teeth have on the nape of his neck. They tear into his flesh with every movement he makes, but he can’t help his frantic attempts to get out of the hold, to free himself from the crippling vulnerability of Strife’s maw.

_Yes!_  he whines, finally, panting relief when Strife’s jaws release. He flips over onto his back immediately, baring the soft hairlessness of his stomach, and tipping his head back to expose his throat. _Yes, I know, Strifey, please_ \- He licks at his muzzle nervously, whining low in his throat, carefully not meeting Strife’s eyes. _I’m sorry. Sorry! I won’t challenge you again._

When Strife doesn’t stop snarling, he shifts back, slowly, limbs straightening and hair receding, teeth blunting and claws retracting in a show of trust. Like this, hairless and weaponless and soft all over, he’s vulnerable, so incredibly vulnerable it makes his stomach twist. His heart’s beating like a rabbit, painful-fast in his chest, and he knows by the way Strife’s ears prick up that the wolf can _hear_  it, the slam of it against his ribcage and the rush of blood in his veins.

“Strifey,” he whispers, voice shaking, body trembling from the cold and from how _exposed_  he is, lying naked in the dirt, out in the open, night pressing in around him. The wolf above him growls, lips still peeled back from its muzzle to show bared, bloody teeth - like this, he can’t understand it, the body language and the noises that he reads so instinctively as a wolf himself. All he can do is lie there and pray. “Strife, _please_.”

For a long, terrifying heartbeat, they stay like that, wolf and human - and then Strife shifts too, quick and messy and incomplete, still hunched shoulders and claws and patchy fur over the smooth curve of his back. He stretches, exhales in a gravelly growl, before his sharp eyes lock on Parvis’ face again.

Parvis barely has time to suck in a breath before Strife is on him.

“ _Mine_ ,” he snarls, voice low and rough as it always is after the shift, his mind still filled with the growl and anger and _possession_  of the wolf. “You’re _mine_ , Parvis, you understand that? You were given to me, and you’re _nothing_ without me-” He grinds himself against the angle of Parvis’ hip, unconcerned by his own nakedness and shameless about his own arousal, not caring that they’re lying in in scrubby grass and earth in some empty plain fair from their home. “-and I _own_  you.”

Digging nails into the dirt, Parvis nods, cheeks pink and eyes averted. “Yes,” he agrees, breathlessly, “yes, _Strife_ , please-” He knows how this ends, this particular bit of the dance, and he’s getting impatient, heels skidding in the dust as he struggles to spread his legs further with Strife’s weight pinning his thighs still. “C’mon-”

Two fingers, spit-slick and too much, push into him and leave him gasping, cheek pressed into the dirt. “Fuck-” he manages, before howling as Strife’s teeth sink into his throat, still the too-sharp bite of the wolf, a claiming wound to match the one on the back of his neck.

“ _Say it_ ,” snarls Strife, pulling back, lips dripping blood - _Parvis’_  blood - as he fucks Parvis roughly with his fingers, not enough preparation for his cock but all Parvis is going to get, because he can’t wait any longer. “Tell me you’re mine. My pack. My  _property_.”

“Yours,” gasps Parvis, legs spreading wider still as Strife peppers his throat and collarbones with nips, tiny streaks of crimson across pale skin. Strife pulls his fingers out, and Parvis whines with the loss, hips arching up to where Strife’s still grinding into his hip, cock heavy and blood-warm. “Your property- your property- I’m _sorry_ -”

“Omega,” snaps Strife again, licking his hand and reaching down to slick up his own cock, wet messy and not enough - not that he cares. Resettling himself between Parvis’ thighs, he ruts against the other, careless and mindless, smearing precome and spit across Parvis’ skin. “Mutt, bitch, _mine_ -” The head of his cock catches against Parvis’ hole and he pushes, forcing inside with a long groan that vibrates through his chest.

Parvis cries out with the sharpness of it, the pain of it, but his cock doesn’t soften and the aching hunger in the pit of his stomach doesn’t ease. Not for the first time, he wonders whether he should bless or curse Xephos for finding him a pack, even if it is just this strange, angry pack of two.

“Yes,” he agrees, tears in his eyes, bucking back against Strife’s thrusts to try and sate the howling, starving _thing_  inside him. “Yes, I’m yours-” He feels it, the minute Strife’s knot begins to swell, catching at his rim and stretching him beyond what he can take. He howls, arse aching, balls too-tight and cock painfully hard and the wolf thrashing in his chest. His shoulders and chest are a mess of bite marks, Strife’s teeth imprinted across the blank canvas of his skin, and he _needs_ , more than he could ever imagine needing anything again, needs Strife’s teeth on him and Strife’s cock in him and Strife’s _claim_ , the promise of a pack and safety and certainty-

Strife thrusts one last time, pushing into him and forcing the swollen bulge of his knot past the tight resistance of Parvis’ hole, and groans, rutting into him with a single-minded intensity. The pressure builds in him, white-hot and lightning, coiling tighter and tighter in his gut until he can stand it no longer and sinks teeth into the tenderness of Parvis’ throat with a growl of relief.

Screaming, Parvis comes from the pain of it and the warmth of Strife’s come in him and the way Strife’s stomach brushes against his cock with every stuttering shove of his hips. As he spends over his own skin, sticky and shameful and just barely enough to sate the wolf, he grabs at Strife’s back, clutching him close and scoring red lines across skin and patchy fur as he clenches around the knot pushed deep inside of him, hungry for the rest of Strife’s come.

Bleeding, sticky, filthy, _claimed_ , the sweat drying cold on his skin and Strife still shoving against him with stuttering puffs of breath and a steady gush of come, the hunger slowly fades. The wolf quiets as an odd peace falls around him, a hazy relaxation that comes with the knowledge that he’s safe now.

Strife has him. Strife, leader of his pack. Strife, who owns him, who’s claimed him - and will continue to claim him, over and over, fucking him into the dirt until he’s crying and filling him up however many times it takes to burn the wanderlust and rebellion from his heart.

He has his place, now. He’s _safe_.


	16. Stockholm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Xephos and Israphel, **tw** stockholm syndrome, neglect, disordered eating

Xephos can’t help it - the way his pulse races at the sound of footsteps, the way his heart leaps, the way he uncurls from his heap on the cold stone floor and shuffles over to the bars of his cell. The chain attached to the manacle welded around his ankle hisses and skitters across the floor as he moves, a low scrape that grates on his nerves like sandpaper.

He’s barely managed to prop himself up against the bars, panting and gasping with the effort of the movement, when Israphel rounds the corner, torch in hand and a sharp, toothsome smile on his face.

“Ssstill refusssing your food?” asks Israphel, gaze sliding from Xephos’ gaunt, waxen face to the untouched tray of food on the floor next to him. It’s hardly _inedible_ , bread and dried, salted meat and a cup of water, all perfectly edible. He has to resist the urge to frown at his prisoner’s ungratefulness - he wasn’t expecting _manners_  from the so-called ‘hero’, after all. “How ssstrange. I would have thought you’d gotten over your sssulking by now.”

Xephos swallows, adam’s apple bobbing in his sallow throat. “Oh, go fuck yourself,” he says, but there’s no heat behind the words - just tiredness, and an ache he can feel all the way down to his bones. It’s cold, and dark, and he’s so hungry it feels like his stomach’s grown teeth and started gnawing on itself. He just doesn’t have the _energy_.

He can feel the luminescent symbiotes in his blood flare at the light of the torch, though, like a rush of flame under his skin. They flock to the nodes and scattered patches of freckles, desperate for any light to photosynthesise with, any energy to regain their glow. He looks pathetic at the moment, his usual sky-blue glow watered down to a strange off-white like curdled milk from the lack of light for the small organisms to feed off.

Apparently, Israphel agrees with his self-assessment, because he makes a derisive noise of amusement at the sudden, weak flash of colour. “Sssuch language!” he admonishes, drawing the torch back every so slightly and smiling at the way Xephos leans into the bars like a dying man reaching for water. “Essspecially sssince you’re _hardly_  looking well…”

Scoffing, Xephos licks at cracked lips, and tries to tell himself he’s imagining the note of concern in Israphel’s voice. “Like you care. _Monster_.” He’s painfully aware of how weak his voice is, the way he’s pressing closer to the light - to _Israphel_  - despite the bars.

“You really are a sssilly thing, aren’t you?” There’s no mistaking the tone in Israphel’s voice, this time, gentler, enough to make Xephos twitch at the mere hint of tenderness. “I give you food, I bring you light, and ssstill you insssult me…Very well, then. A show, of my good will towards you, ssspaceman.”

He takes a step forward, bringing the torch - and himself - barely a foot from Xephos. The alien exhales shakily, fingers twitching and freckles flaring again, eyes wide and hopeful. “I’ll leave the torch with you, if you promissse to eat your food.”

Gratitude wells up in Xephos’ chest, unwanted and unwelcome but there nonetheless. He needs light even more than he needs food, right now, something to chase away the creeping shadows and pitch black. “Yes!” he gasps, bony fingers curling around the bars of his cage as Israphel smiles. “Yes, okay, I- I promise.”

“Good.” Israphel hoists the torch, a little higher, and sets it into a small hoop hammered into the wall for just that purpose. “I’m glad you’ve finally come to your sssenses.” He watched Xephos drag himself, gasping and painstakingly slow, over to the front corner of his cell where the light is strongest - more like some kind of wilting flower than the defender of Minecratia, like this.

Closing his eyes, Xephos lets his forehead fall against the bars, one hand groping for the tray of food as he does so. He’s many things right now, broken and hurting and confused, but unprincipled is not one of them - he’ll hold up his end of the deal.

“Thank you,” he says, quietly, voice small and body trembling a little under the almost-forgotten warmth of the distant flames. The word falls out almost without permission and, with his eyes closed, he can’t see the way they make Israphel _smile_  wide and hungry. “ _Thank you_.”


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Xephos/Lalnable, **tw** psychological abuse, domestic violence, mentions of mental health issues

“Useless,” said Xephos, sharply, waving his knife in a dismissive sort of way as he stabbed at the small, neatly-cut piece of steak on his plate with his fork. “I’m pouring money into your cloning department, Lal, as a _personal_  favour, and you don’t even have anything to _show_  for it?”

Across the table from him, the half-smile slid from Lalnable’s face, replaced with tight, hurt frustration. 

“We’re doing the best we can,” he said, quietly, pushing his own nearly-raw steak around his plate with his fork listlessly. He wasn’t all that hungry, truth be told, appetite somewhat deadened by the stress of twelve hour work days and seven day work weeks, and a _To Do_  pile that got larger with every passing second. “I’m _trying,_  Xeph, I just- this isn’t nuclear physics. Cloning is- it’s a whole new frontier, it’s an entirely unexplored field, I’m working from _scratch_ - I’m… I’m going to need time.”

Scoffing, Xephos looked up from his steak to glare at Lalnable, who fought the urge to cringe under the weight of his gaze. “Time?” he repeated, incredulously, setting his knife and fork down with a quiet chink of silver against china.

He sighed, dragging a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair, looking tired and stressed and so _old_. The faint crows feet at the corners of his eyes that seemed deeper almost with every passing week crinkled as he frowned, eyes drifting closed as he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Look, Lal, you’re the brightest man I know. It’s- it’s why I love you - you’re the only one who can keep up with me.”

Even as Lalnable flushed tentatively and involuntarily pink with the praise, though, he could hear a _but_.

Xephos opened his eyes to smile at Lalnable, almost tenderly - but the affection in the expression was corrupted by the brittle edge of frustration to his voice, the sharpness at the corners of his eyes. “But I didn’t hire you because I love you, though, and I _certainly_  didn’t hire you because I had _time._ I hired you because I wanted results.”

“Maybe if you were a bit more patient-” muttered Lalnable, forgetting himself for just the slightest second. He realised his mistake a second too late, freezing, mouth half-open and eyes wide, shoulders hunching up instinctively. “Shit- Xeph, I didn’t mean-”

It was only quick reflexes and long practice that let him duck the plate hurled at his head.

Xephos’ heavy breathing and the sharp, jagged sound of the plate shattering against the wall, were the only sounds in a room quiet enough you could hear a pin drop.

Once upon a time, Lalnable would have screamed in shock, or perhaps let an involuntary whimper - but not any more. Any reaction to these little… _outbursts_  Xephos had every now and then had long since been dulled as they stopped being surprising and because horribly, awfully routine.

“I’m- I’m sorry,” he said, eventually, voice small in the same way he was trying and failing to make _himself_  small, hunched over his plate with his ears almost up to his shoulders, hands in his lap. “I didn’t mean that, what I said. Honestly. I’m _sorry_.” 

When Xephos said nothing, still, he sucked in a shaky breath, reaching over his shoulder to stroke his ponytail in a habitual tell of nerves as he tried to pull himself together. “I _am_  being slow,” he admitted - even though he wasn’t, even though he and the rest of his department were working flat-out, even though the cracks were beginning to show in his mental health because of how hard he was working himself. “I know, I.. I’ll do better. I promise, Xeph. I _promise._ ”

Dealing with Xephos’ anger was one thing, but dealing with his _disappointment_ … Lalnable didn’t think he could bear that.

Xephos nodded, stiffly, straightening his jacket and sitting down at the table again with a slow exhale of breath. “Yes,” he said, primly, with the terrifyingly calm air of someone only just holding himself in check. “Yes, I expect you will. I want results on my desk in a week, Lalnable.”

Sighing, he reached across the table, dragging Lalnable’s plate in front of him and beginning to eat off of it without so much as a _please_. “Oh- and clear that mess up, would you? Given it’s your fault, I mean. It’s the _least_ you can do.”


End file.
